Course Instructor

  • Curtis Phills, PhD
  • Office: 51/3429
  • Email: curtis.phills@unf.edu
  • Office Hours: T/R noon to 3 pm
  • Course Website: Canvas

Expectations

  • Class begins and ends on time
  • Listen to each other with respect and trust
  • Invest in your own learning
  • Participate actively in your learning

Today you will have the opportunity to:

  • Identify some of the tools psychologists use to conduct research and communicate findings
  • Define what you want to learn

Agenda

  • Class structure
  • Tool 1: Analysis tools
  • Tool 2: Writing tools
  • What do you want to learn?

Class Format

  • Each class will usually consist of:
    • lecture
    • discussion
    • group/individual work
    • maybe a video

Course Textbook

Goals of this course

  • At the end of this course you will be able to:
    • Define your research question
    • Create a professional CV
    • Learn recent developments in Psychology

Assignments

  • 125 possible points
  • CV (25 points)
  • Research Proposal (50 points)
  • Webpage (25 points)
  • Presentation (25 points)
  • Must complete the research proposal
  • 75 points needed to pass. Plan your time accordingly

R (Analysis Tool 1)

According to r4stats:

RStudio

  • We won't work directly with the R GUI. Instead, we will work with R Studio.
  • RStudio provides many, many helpful functions and features
    • These slides were created with RStudio!
    • You can write papers that conform to APA style with RStudio
    • You can make pretty graphs with RStudio
    • You can make shareable output with RStudio
  • But why do any of these things with RStudio?

Reproducible Science

  • Replication: Using new data, can you replicate a previous finding?
  • Reproducibility: Using the same data, can you get the same results?
  • What are some reasons for reproducibility errors?

Statcheck (Analysis Tool 2)

The GRIM Test

Papaja (Writing Tool 1)

  • https://github.com/crsh/papaja
  • Works with RStudio to create APA style consistent manuscripts
  • Never make a reproducibility mistake again!
    • Put your analysis script right in the manuscript!
    • Put the code to create your graphs, right in the manuscript
    • Never mess around with headers and footers again
    • Automatically create reference pages that update as you make changes

Zotero (Writing Tool 2)

  • https://www.zotero.org
  • A reference manager
  • Other options include mendeley or endnotes or refworks
  • We will use zotero for this course because it integrates with RStudio and is free

Grammarly (Writing Tool 3)

  • https://www.grammarly.com
  • Check spelling and basic grammar
    • Excellent at catching passive voice
    • Let's you know when you're being too wordy
    • Not perfect but useful. It's like a fresh set of eyes.
  • I use it for all my writing

2019 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program

  • https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/grfp/Login.do
  • https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12599/nsf12599.htm
  • 3 years of support at approximately $42 000 per year
  • The Personal Statement, Previous Research Experience, and Proposed Plan of Research essays each have a maximum length of two pages, including all references, citations, charts, figures, images, and lists of publications and presentations.
  • Due last of week of October
  • We will work on these essays as part of this class. You decide whether you want to submit

The challenge of every thesis, article, and grant proposal

  • This is where you communicate the contribution of your work
  • What do you want to learn?
  • How are you going to learn it?
  • What do you think will happen?
  • Sometimes you might have objectives instead of hypotheses. But usually you want to write your objectives as though they are hypotheses because they probably are. Sometimes you have hypotheses and objectives. That's ok, all these rules can be broken.

What do you want to learn

  • To learn x, we did y
  • Bad challenges focus on information rather than knowledge
  • Bad challenges focus on results rather than the meaning of results

What do you want to learn (examples)

  • how facial expressions moderate prejudice
  • how favorable participants felt toward people displaying angry, neutral, and happy facial expressions.
  • how men and women are represented in the cognitive schemas of social categories around the world (to learn x)
  • how strongly prejudice against the men and women of social categories were related to prejudice against those categories overall (we did y)

Writing Strategy

  • Get your idea onto the screen
  • Then check out these tips to make your writing more powerful

Tips for writing sentences (1)

  • Subject, verb, object
  • Who is the sentence about?
  • What happened?
  • What was the outcome?
  • Put the verb and subject as close together as possible
  • The ice cream melted.
  • The ice cream, which was strawberry, melted.
  • Can you make this sentence more powerful without losing information?

Tips for writing sentences (2)

  • Topic: the beginning of the sentence. Put old information here
  • Stress: the end of the sentence. Put new information here. This holds the emotional weight of the sentence.
  • In a multi-clause sentence, the ending of each clause is a stress.
  • Topic is second most important. It should be short and clear. Main verb should immediately follow topic.
  • Middle is least important. Put things that you don't want emphasized here. (or don't have this)
  • Stress is most important. Put your key message here. Delete words that follow the word you want to be the stress.
  • The strawberry ice cream melted on the table.

Tips for writing sentences (3)

  • What is the topic and what is the stress? What is the story?
  • Viruses were not studied in the sea until 1989 yet are its most abundant biological entities.
  • The most abundant biological entities in the sea are viruses, yet they were not studied until 1989.
  • The most abundant biological entities in the sea were not studied until 1989: viruses.
  • The placement of 'viruses', '1989', and 'most abundant biological entities in the sea' can tell up to six different stories
  • Think about the story you are telling with each sentence you write

Tips for writing sentences (4)

  • What is the topic of your sentence???
  • Is it you? Is that what you intend?
  • Is it the authors of a paper? Smith (2001) found X.
  • They should never be the topic of a sentence. X (Smith, 2001).
  • Are you using filter phrases? There is evidence that X (Smith, 2001)
  • Delete filter phrases! X (Smith, 2001)

Tips for writing sentences (5)

  • Avoid adverbs. Just use a stronger or weaker noun or verb.
  • There can be exceptions but these adverbs are bad.
  • Significant(ly), certain(ly), entire(ly), high(ly), quite, rather, real(ly), simple(ly), substantial(ly), very
  • The immune system uses a highly effective control mechanism that efficiently discriminates between self and nonself.

Tips for writing sentences (6)

Avoid Long French or Latin Word Use Shorter Viking word (Anglo-Saxon)
Duration (fr) length or time
Consume (fr) eat
Mortality (fr) death
Permit (fr) let
Necesssary (fr) need
Demonstrate (L) show
Donate (L) give
Initiate (L) start
Attempt (fr) try (old french)
Utilize (fr) use (old french)
Methodology (L) Method (also L)

Tips for writing sentences (7)

Use Verbs Avoid Nominalizations
Move Movement
Differ Difference
Suggest Suggestion
Interact Interaction
Analyze Analysis
Develop Development
Influenced had an influence on
Approached took an approach
Yielded The yield of the
Associated The association was

Tips for writing sentences (8)

Fuzzy verbs (weak) Action Verbs (Strong)
occur modify
facilitate increase/decrease
conduct accomplish
implement create
affect invade
perform react
inhibit
disrupt
accelerate
migrate

Tips for writing sentences (9)

  • Always use active voice!
    • Unless you want to hide the actor
    • Or you want to focus on the 'acted on' thing
Voice Subject Verb Object
Active John called Jane
Actor Action Acted-on
Passive Jane was called by John
Acted-on Action Actor

Next week

  • Meet in library
    • (I won't be here)
    • Room 2102B
  • Submit elevator pitch assignment
  • Check Canvas for updates